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Getting Django to run on Windows, with pages served by IIS, and a SQL Server backend. Assume Windows Server 2003, IIS 6 and SQL Server 2005 where no versions are specified. You should already have Windows, IIS and SQL installed and working before following this guide.

Note: As of PyISAPIe version 1.0.4, this works with Python 2.5. The provided handler works with the current (1-11-08) CVS version of Django.

Install Python

A simple download and install for this bit, so open ​http://www.python.org/ and look for "Quick Links" -> "Windows Installer" in the menu on the left. Download and run it, following the wizard steps until it is complete.

Install PyISAPIe - an ISAPI extension for IIS

PyISAPIe is an IIS extension that loads the Python interpreter into memory while IIS is running, and uses it to serve page requests - it avoids the CGI overhead of restarting Python for every request. It does mean that some Django files will be cached and you wont see changes while testing your Django site until you restart the Python process. With IIS 6 you have to right-click on the application pool running your services and select 'recycle' for changes to take. Previous versions of IIS will need the whole IIS service to be restarted.

I will assume you are using c:\python25 as the folder where Python is installed, but please change these where necessary for your setup.

Go to c:\pyisapie\source\PyISAPIe\Python\ and copy the entire Http folder to c:\python25\lib\site-packages. Note: the Http folder is case sensitive. Saving in 'http' (or any other variation) will not work [SF].

Setting up IIS

You don't have to create a virtual directory - you can do this with the root folder. If you do use a virtual directory, say /myfolder, then only urls starting with /myfolder will be handled by PyISAPIe. If you use the root folder, all URLs will be handled by PyISAPIe, and you risk anything else on the site being inaccessible afterwards if you're not careful.

Open the IIS Management Console, and create a new virtual directory, and allow executing ISAPI extensions when prompted by the wizard.

Multiple Django Installations on IIS

You can only run multiple instances of Django on IIS 6.0 if you use a separate instance of PyISAPIe for each Django instance. This is accomplished by setting up an IIS Application Pool for each PyISAPIe/Django instance that needs to be run. It would be great if multiple instances of Django could run under a single PyISAPIe instance. Please encourage the Django developers to work on this issue and/or contribute a fix yourself. You can find more information about this issue here:

IIS 7

Add the PyISAPIe handler by selecting "Handler Mappings ==> Add Script Map" with the following settings:

Request Path = *.py

Executable = Path to the PyISAPIe.dll

Name = PyISAPIe (name can be anything)

Request Restrictions set to "Invoke only if request is mapped to file"

Also, be sure that the PyISAPIe handler is higher than the StaticFile handler by clicking "View Ordered List" and reordering as needed.

IIS 6

View the properties of the new folder and click on the "configuration" button (if it's greyed out, click 'create' first), then add a new wildcard extension (the lower box), locate the pyisapie.dll file and untick the "check that file exists" box.

In the IIS Manager, go to the "Web Service Extensions" section, and right click -> add new web service extension.

Give it a name (it doesn't matter what), add the pyisapie.dll fill as a required file and check the box to set the extension status to allowed.

IIS 5

IIS 5.x doesn't support wildcard application maps, at least not through the configuration interface. On IIS 5, the procedure is as follows:

Right Click on virtual directory and choose "properties"

Ensure "Execute Permissions" is set to "Scripts and Executables"

Click "Configuration" (opposite "Scripts and Executables")

On "App Mappings" tab, select "Add"

For Executable, browse to pyisapie.dll (needs full path if you enter manually)

For extension enter * (this will redirect all requests to pyisapi)

Using star DOES NOT work in IIS 5, you must specify an extension. [pjs]

You should probably limit the verbs allowed; I left as all since it was for internal use.

Untick the "check that file exists" box.

'OK' to close all the open dialogs.

That's it installed. In c:\pyisapie\source\PyISAPIe\Python\examples folder is a file called Info.py. Copy this to your new virtual directory folder, and then try and view ​http://site/Info.py to test it. It should work. If it doesn't, when you find out why, please come back and explain what happened and how you fixed it. ;)

IIS Troubleshooting

Django

Text below saved in hope of an update to PyISAPIe:If you want to keep up with the latest Django development version, you will need to download and install a subversion client for Windows, e.g. ​Tortoise SVN, install it, then create a new folder somewhere. Right click on the folder, and choose "SVN Checkout". Give the URL of the repository as: ​http://code.djangoproject.com/svn/django/trunk/ and click OK.)

Otherwise, just download the latest Django release from the main site, and extract the archive to a folder, e.g. c:\python25\django\.

Installing Django

NB: You will probably need to do some messing around with paths and such to make this work neatly. I'm afraid I'm leaving that to you for now, because I don't have clear steps. If you know any, please put them here. Without doing that you can still test the Django install, but will need a full path to django-admin.py:

You have everything you need to have Django running from IIS. Now visit ​http://site/myfolder/ to take a look. Notice that you don't need to manually start a Django server.

Known Issues

On IIS 5, you have to use the console command "iisreset" for code changes to take effect. Just restarting the website in IIS Management Console has no use. How about IIS 6? (20070304/henrik: - same for iis6 on win2k3)

NOT true for IIS6: right-click on the application pool your site is using and select "Recycle." [pjs]

For debugging purposes in IIS6 you could set "Recycle worker process (number of requests)" = 1 in your application pool properties so you don't need to "Recycle" all the time. NOT recommended for production usage. [ta]

I had to create a "media" virtual directory for the stylesheets, etc, at the root of my IIS directory tree (urgh) with read permissions to get the admin site to load styles. Looking at the source for the admin page in my browser, the stylesheet link is absolute (/media/...) [rnm]